Unmade
by jess is a shark
Summary: "That's what I said to you, that day back on the helicarrier. Loki unmade me." Clint's been acting a little off since Loki left, and Natasha decides it's time to do something about it. Clintasha one-shot.


**So I've seen The Avengers twice now and hhnnnggggg CLINT AND NATASHA, MAN. If they don't get their own solo movie I swear I don't know what I'll do. Anyways I started writing this without any specific idea, and I just sorta went with the flow. Just a little one-shot set a few weeks after the end of the Avengers, and my headcanon is that they all moved (at least temporarily) into Stark Tower so that's that and here's the story! Enjoy and let me know what you think c:**

After the adrenaline of the battle in Manhattan wore off, Clint found himself absent much too often. Not in the physical sense – he always stayed somewhere near to the tower, whether in sight or not. But mentally, emotionally, he was becoming distant. Detaching himself.

Natasha hated it. She was supposed to be the cold one. He was the one who kept his enemies closer than his friends, and that's why he was so dangerous. But he hardly even looked her in the eyes anymore, and it scared her. She was losing him.

She knew he rarely slept anymore. She heard him creep down the hallway and past her door every night. To anyone else's ears, the sound would be unnoticeable, but she had been on far too many missions with him to not be able to recognize his careful, stealthy footsteps. It wasn't hard, either, to guess where he was sneaking off to all the time. A hawk has to perch, after all.

And then one night, the footsteps paused outside her door. They had slowed a little at first, hesitated; and then simply ceased. Natasha held her breath, waiting – for what, she wasn't so sure. A knock on the door? Clint calling her name?

Two minutes of deafening silence later, the footsteps moved on.

Her curiosity had been piqued. She slipped out of bed, took the pistol out from under her pillow, slid it into her thigh holster, and followed.

True to his character, Clint was on the roof. His back was turned to Natasha and he was just crouching…watching over New York. He didn't have his bow with him, nor his quiver. It seemed like he hadn't even brought a knife or a gun. Clearly, he was planning on being alone. He kept completely still, and if Natasha hadn't known better she would've thought him a statue. She watched him from the opposite side of the roof, sitting in the shadows of a large satellite dish. Though the air was filled with the hustle and bustle of the city that never slept, all that Natasha could hear was the both of them saying nothing.

And then, in a voice so low she almost missed it – "Hi, Tasha."

She didn't reply. Instead, she joined him wordlessly, dangling her feet over the edge of the skyscraper. For a while, they stayed like that – just being together, not talking, not moving, not sharing any meaningful looks…simply comforted by each other's presence. They fit together so naturally that it was almost unnatural. Their breathing fell into synchronization, and they existed as one.

She broke the silence first. "Every night, huh?" Natasha had a quiet voice. She needn't whisper – she was a quiet, secretive person, and her voice matched that flawlessly.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Clint give a tiny nod. "Clears my head," was all he had to say on the matter. Natasha didn't push him. She knew she would get nowhere if he didn't want to talk.

More silence. Natasha played a little game with herself – every time she heard a siren blaring from the streets far below them, she invented the scenario it was on its way to. An armed robbery at a family-owned jewelry store, a drunken game of Russian Roulette gone wrong when the safety was accidentally turned off. This went on for quite a while, and she was just beginning to get desperately creative when Clint spoke again.

"Unmade." It wasn't a complete sentence in any sense of the term, but he said it so assuredly, so firmly… Natasha turned her head, observing Clint's profile; his stony expression bathed in surreal, silvery moonlight.

"What?"

"Unmade. That's what I said to you, that day back on the helicarrier. Loki unmade me." His voice was hoarse with emotion. It was quiet, but not like Tasha's was; not in volume – it was quiet with the desperate, ashamed air of defeat, and an exhaustion so deep and overwhelming it stifled his very soul. Clint's eyes may have returned to their normal steely gray after Loki's spell had left him, but they'd never quite regained their old spark.

"Clint…" She wasn't sure what to say, so she let her voice taper off pathetically. Clint's words hung ominously in the air and echoed through Natasha's mind. _Unmade, unmade, unmade…_

"I can still feel him, Nat. He's still there, in the back of my mind. It's like I've got my own Other Guy, now, you know? I just…I don't know when he'll reveal himself. And I don't really want to find out."

"So…you've distanced yourself," she said. It wasn't a question, but a hard fact. She continued to stare at him, taking in the lines under his eyes and across his forehead that hadn't been there before, and the way the corners of his mouth drooped downward in a semi-permanent frown. She realized she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him smile.

"I'm scared, Tasha." He turned to meet Natasha's gaze, and the sheer vulnerability in his wise eyes shattered the heart she denied she had.

"This is what he wanted…Loki, I mean," she said, her voice breathy and uncertain (because Natasha was never one to spring forward with words of comfort), "He'd – he'd be happy if he knew you weren't fighting. Don't give in, Clint. Don't do that to yourself…don't do that to us. The team, we – we need you." Her tongue tripped over her words as they left her mouth. She struggled to bring her thoughts and feelings to fruition, wrestling with her brain for just the right words. "_I_ need you."

Clint's jaw twitched and his mouth twisted into a pained grimace. "You don't. None of you do. You don't need someone who doesn't even know himself anymore, someone who can't even trust himself. You don't want that person, and that person is me."

Tasha opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. "I know. I know how many agents I killed. How many deaths I caused indirectly. I don't sleep because whenever I close my eyes I hear their voices, see their faces. Phil is the worst. And you. I could've killed you, Nat. I was so close." His voice shook - it never shook. Natasha wanted to cry for him – she never cried, not for anyone. "And Loki's always there, smiling. Manipulating me like a puppet on strings."

"That wasn't you, Clint. It wasn't you, any of it. It was Loki, and everyone knows that." Natasha shook her head, as if to cast away the bubble of helplessness that was beginning to grow inside of her.

"_It was me_." His voice rose dangerously, his eyes hardened, and for a moment Natasha felt fear – her hand went instinctively toward her thigh, where the small pistol was hidden under her pale yellow nightgown. It didn't go unnoticed by Clint, and his face fell, looking even more broken than before.

"Exactly." he said, looking off again into the expanse of busy nightlife before them. "It was me. Loki may have been inside my head, but_ I_ did those things. _I'm_ capable of those things. And I should've…I should've been able to fight it. But I couldn't. So it was me.

"You used to know I'd never hurt you, and so did I. Now you don't, and neither do I. And that's fucking terrifying."

Natasha let this sink in. She sat there lamely for a moment, speechless, before she reached under her nightgown and pulled the gun out of its holster. She turned it around in her hands a few times, hyperaware of Clint's eyes following her every slightest movement – yet he didn't flinch or move away, not even the tiniest bit. Natasha heaved a deep sigh and flung the gun behind her, sending it skidding noisily across the roof and far out of their reach. She looked at Clint; looked at the puzzled expression in those amazing, deadly eyes, and shrugged. "You won't hurt me."

"But I could," he protested weakly, his eyes darting briefly to the lonely pistol and then back to Natasha. "I could…"

"You _won't_, Clint. I promise." She put a hand on his, giving it a gentle squeeze. "And if you try, I'll just kick your ass again."

The smile that resulted looked so out of place on Clint's tired, worn face. It only lingered there on his lips for a few short moments, but when it faded away Natasha was sure his eyes had gotten a little brighter.

"Go back to bed, Nat," he teased, and it seemed as if he'd just had the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. She knew he wasn't better, not yet; but it was progress.

She smirked back at him. "I wasn't sleeping anyway. You're not the only one around here with nightmares, Barton." She stood and walked away, not even paying the abandoned gun a backwards glance.

"Tell me something I don't know, Romanoff!" Clint called after her, still unmoving at his perch. His voice wasn't quiet like Natasha's, not when he was acting like his usual self. His voice was warm and comforting and even though he wasn't yelling, it still seemed to echo through the chilly night air importantly. As Natasha waited for JARVIS to slide open the panel that led back into the tower, he spoke in that low, nearly inaudible tone once more – when she heard his words, the corners of her lips twitched upwards in the beginnings of a smile.

"Love you too, Clint," she muttered, knowing there was no way with his hearing he'd catch her response. She lowered herself down off the roof, and when she returned to her room and finally fell asleep, it was the first night in years that the nightmares had left her alone.


End file.
